Voters in Washington state overwhelmingly rejected an attempt led by the father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates to impose an income tax on earners of $200,000 per year or more.
Initiative 1098, advocated by Bill Gates Sr., was trailing 65 to 35 percent, according to returns last night.
Current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen opposed the proposal. Ballmer gave $425,000 of his personal fortune to defeat it.
Another chief opponents was Amazon.com founder and Chairman Jeff Bezos, who donated $100,000.
One of the chief reasons given by Washington voters for opposing the measure is that they didn't believe the tax would stay limited to incomes of $200,000 or more. Opponents called it a ploy to "soak the rich" so that politically favorable tax breaks could be offered to the middle class and the poor.
The measure would have taxed annual incomes above $200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for couples at a rate of 5 percent. Incomes over $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for couples would have been assessed a 9 percent rate.
It also would have reduced the state portion of property taxes for all Washington state residents by 20 percent and exempted 118,000 businesses from the business-and-occupation tax.
One example of the highly emotional opposition to the initiative was Sue Lani Madsen, who criticized a "60 Minutes" story on the measure on a Seattle P-I blog.
"Did Bill Gates, Sr. pay you for that infomercial supporting 1098? In Washington state, an initiative of the people can be set aside by the legislature with a simple majority after 2 years have passed. Since the legislature took just such action to set aside an initiative requiring a 2/3 vote to raise taxes, the precedent is clearly there. Any assurances by Mr. Gates that this tax is only on the wealthy and will only be used for education are false," Madsen wrote.
Opinion polls showed 54 percent of likely voters opposed to the measure and 43 percent in favor.
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